


shirogane (i wanna feel it too)

by Nightsweater



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Clones, Gen, Identity Issues, Intrusive Thoughts, Kuron, Panic Attacks, Peace, Post-Season/Series 03, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Project Kuron, Shiro (Voltron) is Missing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-13 00:52:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11748702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightsweater/pseuds/Nightsweater
Summary: It all started unraveling in the slowest way possible, the way a small hole in a shirt turned to one you could stick your finger through, to one that caught and ripped the thing sheer in half.





	shirogane (i wanna feel it too)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aiis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aiis/gifts).



> so s3e5 fucked me up and im never gonna stop wondering whats going on with shiro's headspace. this is also a vent piece about how i went to the lake and had a panic attack so uh, im projecting on this boy
> 
> listen to island in the sun by weezer on repeat for this, it made me cry while writing

There’s times and places he remembers, where the knowledge of other things pressed in heavy at the edges of the experience. Worry, doubt, anxiety, trauma, hesitation, fear- all put off, because there wasn’t time or space to deal with it in the moment. The demands of the moment, the here and now, meant more and took more than someone caught up in their feelings and past could handle, so he simply wasn’t that person. 

That was then. That was the Shirogane that left for Kerberos, and there was no way to know for sure if he was that person. 

The mole hill that had been that baggage was looking more like a mountain from this new perspective and he didn’t know how to be okay with it. He didn’t know how to lead Voltron anymore, if he’d ever even done it in the first place. They didn’t need him to do that. They didn’t need him for much of anything anymore.

It all started unraveling in the slowest way possible, the way a small hole in a shirt turned to one you could stick your finger through, to one that caught and ripped the thing sheer in half. 

They had a slow week. An outpost needed supplies they didn’t have the means to transport which turned into helping a colony set up planet-wide communications, and then it was preventing a fungus from wiping out one of the only viable food sources on a meteorite home to a few hundred stray rebels. The Blade of Marmora needed shoring up with resources and defenses, so they made contact with benefactors. 

The Paladins rushed around at these activities, Hunk developing anti-gravity loaders from scrap, Pidge working on anti-fungal pesticides that wouldn’t poison anyone, the two of them roping Lance in for the work on communications, Allura using her best diplomacy voice for the Blade, and Keith at the head of them all, delegating with a strong and clear voice, cutting through the technicalities where he could to get to the heart of things, what really mattered, and the others smiling at him as his leadership skills honed with each new interaction.

He started fading into the background of the bridge, and then he stopped going all together. 

It wasn’t a big deal, he told himself. He’d just escaped from Galra capture for the second (?) time. The others would find him when they needed him.

He found an old room, the kind that the Castle had trouble booting the lights in for a solid few minutes as he poked at controls. Finally they all came on in a soft blue-green, slightly different from the regular lighting. There were many curved little alcoves in the room, nearly private, with deep, squashy egg-shaped chairs. When he sat in one, it lit up green all along the outline of his body, placing soft, shifting shadows on the ceiling. 

For a long moment his mind went smooth, blank, still. He let out a deep breath.

The chair started glowing brighter, the shadows on the ceiling growing sharper. The shadows made shapes that stretched up the walls, jagged and looming, and suddenly he wasn’t in the chair, he was strapped to a table and the lights were so bright in his eyes and figures were above him that were shaped too long, too broad to be human-

His body moved without him. It was good at that. He came back to it mid-stride, walking fast towards the lion hangars. He slowed to a halt in the hallway, trying to control his breathing, trying to bring the sudden flame of panic under his ribs under control.

It hadn’t happened in the slow week. He hadn’t broken down for a week and now here he was, blanking out because of a chair and some lights. He looked down at his hands, the hands he hated seeing, and saw that one shook. It wasn’t the metal one and somehow that made him hate it more.

Hate, even, had once been foreign. Hate had always seemed pointless- expending energy to cause harm to anyone had seemed pointless. Wanting to see someone burn for hurting him had seemed extreme and more about self-harm than real revenge. But now it pulsed inside him all the time despite knowing that, stirring up into a frenzy when he wasn’t careful. It never got out- he didn’t know how to let it out, really- but the threat of it kept him in a cold sweat some nights. He didn’t want to be that person, the kind of person who hated.

He wandered into the common room on autopilot and it was Pidge who called out happily, “Oh, Shiro!”

He looked around, even as the panic and hatred bubbled just under his skin. He killed it inside of himself as soon as he met her excited eyes and let his blander, safer self show on his face.

“What’s up?” he asked, and Lance sprang over the couch to fling something at him. He caught it, and found that it was a wad of black and purple fabric. It was a pair of swimming trunks, and he felt his eyebrows jump up as he spread them out in his hands.

“We found the prettiest beach in the galaxy, bro! We’re taking a day off to go swimming!” he crowed. He couldn’t help but make a face and Keith snorted from across the room. Like Lance, he was already in swim trunks and Pidge had on a wet suit dotted with flowers. 

“Is it....safe? The last time you went on an underwater adventure, it seems like you bit off a bit more than you could chew,” he said and Hunk, coming into the room, laughed aloud.

“It’s all good, man. Scanners show there’s no signs of life bigger than a minnow on the planet yet and all of the activity is confined to the heat trenches miles off shore. It’s safe, believe me. I would not be putting my precious, precious toes into any alien water without knowing that I get to keep them all at the end of the day.”

Hunk, at least, was excellent for that. He sighed in relief, and in the energy of Coran and Allura entering the room in their swimming outfits, he could nearly pretend that this was normal. That he was a normal guy with friends, going to the beach to relax.

The illusion kept up all the way to planet’s surface, and the feeling of unease rose in a distant, background way as the others exclaimed at the glittering silver sand of the beach and the green halo around the far blue sun. The sea rolled gently, the susurrations of the water soothing at the kind of base level that even he couldn’t deny. The water was nearly colorless thanks to the thinness of the atmosphere, and while the others floundered excitedly in the surf, he took his boots off and drove his toes into the sand. The grains were too thick to trick him into thinking that it might be Earth but it was close enough to settle his shakes and unclench his spine. 

He took a deep breath, and somehow it was the first one that seemed to hit the bottom of his lungs in forever. The wind felt cool on his skin and he could hear the others close enough that he didn’t have to track them consciously.

They’d landed the Castle far back from the shore in the rocky hills but the sea stretched from horizon to horizon, the curve of the beach making the sky seem endless above. Wispy clouds skittered few and far between and some stars glittered hazily high up in the sky, as if twilight would come soon, although it was midday. He started to wander to a sandbar, the warm water slipping around his ankles and away in a rhythm close to a heartbeat.

It was soothing. It was so soothing, the kind of peace that felt like treasure in the middle of an occupied Empire. The sandbar took him into a tiny jut of land, surrounded by the water, and he stood in it with sea and sun and sky holding him in a peace he didn’t think he’d ever felt in his life.

He didn’t realize tears had started until he heard sand shift behind him and Keith said, “Shiro?”

“You shouldn’t call me that,” he said, before he could stop himself. The bitterness leaked out in his voice and the tears made him sound choked. He swiped angrily at his cheeks, voice bottled in his throat as heavy as a rock. 

Keith stepped closer and when he was beside him and saw that he was crying he reached out anxiously for his arm. 

He yanked it back, not even meaning to but too disgusted by the thought of Keith touching him, touching that arm that they’d put on him, now, when he was full of all of these heavy, unfurling feelings, that he felt too dangerous.

Keith stood there for a long time, simply by his side. He couldn’t see all of him but in his swim trunks he seemed young, boyish in a way he’d left behind a long time ago.

“I don’t understand,” Keith said finally. It sounded like he was admitting to a weakness but Keith never understood that this was one of his strengths, one that had taken him a while to grow into and one which he used all the time. A leader saying “I don’t know” left room for others to inform on his choices before he made them instead of making one blind.

He looked away, at the sun and it’s thin clouds, and tried not to feel like he was dredging up dead bodies from a swamp when he said, “When I escaped again...there were...I saw-”

His voice died again and the tears leaked more. The hatred boiled to the surface, at himself. He should have said this at the beginning, in his room when it had been just him and Keith. He should have said. He’d lied to them all for weeks now, and they’d hate him for this.

They’d dispose of him for this, even.

Instantly he knew that was wrong but the thought wormed its way around in him and he couldn’t shake it. He had to dig his fingernails into his palm to get a fraction of the air he’d had before, and Keith said again, “Shiro, what-”

“You can’t call me Shiro anymore, I’m not him!” he shouted. He didn’t mean to shout. He didn’t mean to cry, or shake, or grit his teeth and make a seething, hurting noise that belonged with bloodshed and adrenaline, not this peaceful sea, not this beautiful, untouched place. 

He took a breath, three, and pushed it down again. They had to know. They had every right. He had to get this out now, while he had the chance. While they’d still have enough pity and leftover fondness for him to listen.

“On board the Galra ship, I saw another one of me laid out on a table. They were experimenting on it- him- I don’t- The Galra had access to every bit of Takashi Shirogane and they decided that one wasn’t enough. I don’t know which one is the real one. I don’t know if I’m the Shiro you knew at all. I don’t know what they put in me!”

He was trembling like a leaf. The cool wind and the light suddenly felt harsh, and he craved nothing more than the darkened cave that was his room back on the ship. He wanted to go back there and sleep until he died, sleep until all these jagged feelings were eroded smooth, sleep in the way that left you more tired when you woke up than when you laid down. He wanted to go back to being harmless, to being a pilot exploring his solar system who had some issues but wasn’t broken, busted, used up and reforged. 

Keith planted his hand on his shoulder and squeezed hard, at the pressure point. The tension inside of him collapsed in on itself, and he gave up on standing to sit in the sand, press his forehead to his knees and weep like he hadn’t ever in his life.

Familiar bodies shored up next to his- Keith pressed too hard into his side, Lance’s leg against his hip, Hunk’s back pressed into his, Pidge splashing up out of the water to sit on his feet. Allura guarded his other side, and he heard Coran exchange soft words with her above his head before he headed back towards the Castle. He wept and cringed into his knees because they still didn’t understand, they still didn’t get what a fake he was. 

The tears came out cleanly, without getting his breath hitched up into hyperventilation. That his body granted him that seemed to stave off the stress headache that usually came with crying, and when he was done his eyes felt swollen but he also felt remarkably calmer. Exhaustion swept over him hard, but that was a burden he was used to shifting off onto sometime in the future. 

Quiet reigned for a while, the sound of the tide mixing with the breath of the Paladins. Pidge stood, and waited until he looked up at her to speak. Without her glasses on, she looked just like her brother. It made his heart twinge with sadness and it felt like he was feeling it on behalf of someone else.

“You remembered us. You remembered Voltron, and you remembered the promises that were made. And you came back. As far as it matters, you’re ours, okay? And it doesn’t matter which version of you it is, we’ll take it. If you think they put something in you that could hurt us, then we’ll fix it.”

“You don’t know that you can,” he said, because accepting any of that meant accepting all of it and he couldn’t do that. None of it fit. They couldn’t want him just because he was close enough. 

“That’s not going to stop us from trying,” Allura said, so firmly that she almost sounded angry. When he looked at her, she did look angry but her eyes were fixed on the Castle of Lions, and he thought maybe she wasn’t thinking about being angry at him. The thought hadn’t occurred to her yet.

“Maybe you aren’t the right Shiro, but so what? If none of us know for sure, then we don’t have any evidence to say that you aren’t our Shiro, anyways,” Hunk said. It seemed a little harsh that way, but Hunk never spared the truth because it was a difficult thing to say. If that was how he felt then it meant that he believed in the possibility enough to act like it was true.

“What did you think we would do if you told us this, kick you out? We didn’t kick Keith out, so now there’s a precedent. It’d be a shame if we started making exceptions just for you, buddy,” Lance said, and knocked his knee into his shoulder.

Keith grasped his forearm, wrist to wrist, the same way his memories said they always had. 

“What do you want to happen here? Do you want to be Shiro, or do you want to be someone else?”

The Paladins all seemed to look at him at once and he could only stare back at Keith as he fought for words.

“I don’t know. I feel like...I can’t just...step into being that person. I’m not the same. Things have happened and I’m not the same.”

“Well, we have to have something to call you,” Allura said haltingly and Pidge looked around at her with a ferocious glint in her eyes.

“Don’t pressure him right now. Names can wait.”

“Kuron,” he said dully, remembering, “a scientist said something about a Project Kuron.” 

It didn’t matter what they called him, after all. Any name was as good, and that was technically when he’d realized there was a divide in identity to address.

“Then welcome to the team, Kuron,” Keith said, and helped him to his feet.


End file.
